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Money, Mongols and Mao

FT’s James Kynge (author of ‘China shakes the world’ – a great book), has a good article (nearly two weeks old) on China’s liquidity flood. Few lines from the article (behind a paywall, probably):

Ousmène Jacques Mandeng, formerly with the International Monetary Fund, has calculated that between 2007 and 2015 China created 63 per cent, or $16.1tn, of the growth in the world’s supply of money.

China now has more money coursing through the arteries of its economy than the eurozone and Japan combined — and almost as much as the US and the eurozone combined. Since the financial crisis, commentators have focused on the efforts of US, European and Japanese central banks to print money through “quantitative easing”, but China’s output has eclipsed them all.

Marco Polo would have been impressed. He noted with awe China’s capacity to print off as much money as it needed: “It may certainly be affirmed that the grand khan has a more extensive command of treasure than any other sovereign in the universe”. [Link]